


What It’s Like On The Outside

by Aleaiactaest



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Death, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Medical Examination, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6140579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleaiactaest/pseuds/Aleaiactaest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early days of the Autobot/Decepticon War, Impactor escapes from prison, is accidentally captured, and discovers that prisoners are supposed to be given appropriate healthcare.</p><p>He doesn't like it.</p><p>(Impactor/Megatron and Impactor/others is mentioned but does not actually occur on-screen.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What It’s Like On The Outside

They put that pile of law enforcement slag in with him, and Impactor showed Whirl his insides. There could have been no other outcome. Megatron would have seen immediately that Impactor was a tool, that the ones who held both Impactor and Whirl down wanted Whirl punished and that Impactor was their instrument. Megatron would have further posited that the interaction was emblematic of how the powers above drove in wedges to divide the classes: why would the police class have any sympathy for those they policed when they knew those under them were just itching to turn the tables and beat them? That Impactor would take Whirl within a span of his life again and again, no matter how many times Impactor was thrown in the cooler in solitary - a massive freezer that took him down to absolute zero, where all he could feel was a continuous moment of his spark guttering, frozen in time - was merely proof that lower classes needed a stern hand to police their baser instincts. That was what they’d say.

Impactor didn’t see it. Impactor just saw that a so-called police officer who had, according to rumor, laid a hand upon his best friend was in the cell with him, and Impactor must have done something right, to be given the shot at pounding a lesson into Whirl. Whirl had done wrong. Mortilus knew, their whole rotten society would never deliver justice to him, so it was on Impactor to administer retribution.

There were bets on how long it’d take - bets on the length of the beatings, bets on whether he’d actually kill Whirl, on whether Whirl might manage to kill him - it was a spectacle.

But eventually, Whirl got out. Law enforcement always did. It wasn’t for the upper classes to suffer long. Impactor rotted.

Rumors and gossip of the war swirled. The Senate was dead. There was a new Senate. Bludgeon had crashed shuttles into civilian settlements. Autobots had bombed civilians. There was a new Prime. Transformers died to feed a vamparc weapon. Nyon exploded. A monster titan raged across Cybertron.

Impactor rotted in a cage.

Then the damnedest thing happened. The guards all left. Some prisoners took the chance, tried to make it out, but the doors were still locked. Impactor could hear a commotion, levels above. Curiosity, albeit dim, stirred, and Impactor waited. He was waiting a fair amount of time.

Down the hallway, there was a short Autobot, his red badge prominent on his chest, clashing with the yellow and black hazard stripes that marked him a miner as surely as the twin drills on his back. _Twin_ drills. Impactor let out a low whistle. The Autobot went up to the door lock of the first cell, drilled it out, and barked at the prisoner, “Get out of here! This place is gonna blow, and I’m not sure how much time there is before the bombers arrive.”

That prisoner ran. The Autobot kept going down the cells, until he came to Ram-Kill, who slammed into the Autobot and bashed him up against the wall again and again. Impactor could have told the little Autobot that Ram-Kill was a lost cause, but then, why would he? The Autobot flipped up and transformed, faster than Impactor had seen anyone, ever, and slammed back into Ram-Kill, driving him down the hallway. Then he flipped back up and ran to the next cell, opening it.

Ram-Kill chased him and ran into Soundcrash, newly freed, who grabbed Ram-Kill and shook him, declaring, “Hey. Hey, Ram-Kill, we’re free!”

“But that smelt-sucker -” Ram-Kill declared, pointing at the Autobot with the drills, who had now opened another cell. The prisoner ran past Ram-Kill and Soundcrash.

Soundcrash dismissed, “Scrap the Autobot; bombers are coming. Let’s get out of here!” He took Ram-Kill by the hand and dragged him away.

That wasn’t the only scrap the Autobot had. He was a brief, brutal fighter, but all he seemed to care about was getting his attackers away from him. He wasn’t here to kill or even to maim, and Impactor found that morbidly fascinating, because humiliation and mutilation were so often the point of interaction in Garrus-1.

When the Autobot made it to Impactor’s cell, the last cell on the last floor, they were alone together. The Autobot must have seen Impactor staring at his drills, because he snapped, irritated, “Yes, it took me 400 years.”

“I had one like that,” Impactor said, excusing himself. It wasn’t exactly the same, a different model, but now all he had was a stump, because they’d taken even his hand when they took out the drill. This close, he could see that the Autobot had diamond-tipped drills, and unbidden, Impactor started to speculate where the Autobot might have worked. Must have been some tough drilling...

Then the Autobot’s gaze flicked to Impactor’s stump, and his gaze softened. “Oh.” He took a step back. “I think there are some spares in the armory?”

Impactor stepped out of the cell and looked the miner - he _had_ to be a miner - up and down. He said quietly, incredulously, “You want to arm me.”

The Autobot shrugged and turned, heading back the way out. “Suit yourself.”

“No, I’m game,” Impactor said, impulsively. He had no idea what was going on. Autobots didn’t bust into prisons to free _his kind_ , but… that Autobot _was_ his kind. Undeniably.

The Autobot flipped back into alternate mode. He was a speedy little thing for a mining vehicle. Running, Impactor couldn’t keep pace, but they made it to the armory. The Autobot made a mess, knocking over boxes, ripping into crates, until he spilled open a box of drills. He surfaced from under the pile of drills, picked one up, and asked, “Was it like this?”

Impactor didn’t see _his_ drill anywhere in the pile, and he hesitated. These drills had belonged to specific people, were parts of specific people. It felt wrong, on some level, even thinking about putting on another miner’s drill, and yet…

When they died, the body would be pieced out. The valuable parts, the supervisor would take, leaving the scrap for the miners. Could Impactor say that his drill hadn’t belonged to someone else before him? He grunted, “Close enough.”

The Autobot tried to help him slot it into his stump, and he could get it to spin up, but he could tell the connection wasn’t good. The Autobot looked around the armory, knocked down a few more shelves, and tossed him a pistol, which Impactor caught. The edges of his mouth curled, thinking about how fond his last supervisor had been of pistol-whipping him, and he stashed the pistol in a compartment in his lower leg.

Then the Autobot demanded, “It’s too late now. You’ll have to follow me if you want to make it out alive.” He transformed and drilled straight down. The tunnel he left was little, and Impactor had to crawl, but it was nothing he hadn’t done before. They dropped down into a sewer, after a while, and then the Autobot drilled deeper. Not long after that, the whole tunnel shook as if Luna-2 itself wanted to fall apart, and there was a flash of distant heat that Impactor could feel even so deep below, but the tunnel was good, and there was no collapse.

They came out again in a deeper, older sewer. Finally, Impactor asked, “Why are you an Autobot?”

The Autobot looked startled and said, “I’m… not, not so much, but my brother. He did security on the waterways.”

 _Brother_. More than likely, the Autobot was forged, then. Maybe that explained his freaky-fast transformation. Impactor snorted derisively. Good little forged miner, doing what his security guard brother said, joining the Autobots to put his boot down on his own burdened back.

Anger flashed in the Autobot’s optics, and he said hotly, “It’s not like that.”

They walked along the forgotten sewer, and the echoing expanse prompted the Autobot to go on, “Our protoform branched. He came out an amphibious craft and was assigned a cartographer. I was a miner. He did off-world work, while there was off-world work to be had, but he’d always come and visit me when he was back in the system. Shared with me what he could, and you know, there’s always a bot…” He paused, hesitating, and he looked around nervously, as if he was about to confide a secret. “...there’s always a bot who can do a bit of repairs. Not a medic. Just. A bit on the side.”

There always was a bot like that in the mines. It was incredibly dangerous, going against one’s assigned function, but the mines wouldn’t have been operational without those bots, so the supervisors turned a blind optic, as long as the ersatz medic didn’t put on airs above his station or attract too much attention.

“My brother, he’s like that. Took care of me as best he could,” the Autobot concluded. There was no supervisor here to take the Autobot and Impactor alike behind the chemical shed for even discussing such a thing, and yet the words were still so hard to say.

Scorn dripping, Impactor asked, “Why didn’t he just get you out, if he was so great?”

The Autobot’s drills spun up on his back even as his fingers tensed, and he snapped, “Because it would have gotten us both killed! Not going to lie, surface bots had it _better_ , but their bosses still got away with anything our supervisors did, so my brother could still have ended up dead for going against his function. There was no ‘out’ to get to. The only bots who were ‘out’ were the Senate, and now they’re dead.”

Impactor had never really thought about that, but he supposed it was so. It was easy to envy the surface dwellers, but being trapped in a better cage wasn’t any less trapped. Sure, Whirl had gotten out, but they’d still put Impactor in with him while he was here. Even the police got locked up when they displeased their superiors, even if they weren’t locked up as long as they should have been. The thought made Impactor feel uneasy.

For a while, there was nothing but echoes and the dripping of fluid.

Then the Autobot started up again, “Anyway, when the off-world work dried up, he was recalled back to Cybertron and reclassified into doing waterway security work. Still helped me as he could. Eventually, the Decepticons came. Rounded up all the supervisors and all the guards and shot them in front of us. Even the good supervisor.”

The Autobot paused. There wasn’t always a good supervisor, but there usually was. They made a mine run, like the bots who knew a bit about repairs did.

“Sureplate. He’d been one of us. Maybe the best of us. Saved some Functionist from a cave-in while touring the mine - _feh_ \- and got a minor reclassification. Miner to supervisor. He knew how it was. Worked the worst shifts. Made sure we had the supplies we needed when the other supervisors were too busy skimming off the top to care. And the Decepticons hauled him out and shot him and we stood by and did nothing.”

The Autobot paused again, and Impactor had to ask about the rumors he’d heard, though he kept in mind it was an Autobot he was asking, “Is… is… Megatron still the leader of the Decepticons?”

The Autobot laughed, “Yeah! There was a bit with Scorponok there, but Megatron’s back. I was almost a Decepticon, you know? Even though they shot Sureplate. They were everything I’d wanted. The Senate was torn down; everything was in flames, Megatron even killed that crosswired skidplate Zeta… but my brother, he… he was in danger.”

The Autobot looked shifty again, and they slogged along, _drip drip drip_.

“So I left the Decepticon recruit camp and went looking for him. No one questioned me, y’know? I came to a Decepticon concentration camp, and I just walked right in. Got stopped a few times to ask where my symbol was, but I handled it.”

Impactor thought about the Autobot’s brief, brutal fights.

“I found him about to be dismantled. There was no sense to any of it?” He sounded bitter and angry, and his drills spun a little. “None of them. The place was packed with scientific class, more even than Autobot soldiers. Maybe they’d benefitted from my labour, but what had they done to me?” The Autobot looked at his hands. “If any one of them stood up and said, ‘Hey, I don’t wanna look at really tiny stuff anymore, lemme go dig trenches,’ that’d be the end of it. My brother, they took because he was security, but...”

Now his drills roared, and his hands clenched.

“The Decepticons, at the concentration camp? Couldn’t tell you how many had been Senate security. Mortilus, I could have smashed the smirks off their faces… Anyway. I got my brother out. Let go who I could. I don’t… know if it really helped?” He rubbed the back of his head, looking conflicted. “I mean, a real rescue attempt would have been better thought out. Thought out period. I’m not so good at thinking.”

“Who told you that?” Impactor asked, fiddling with his new drill. It just wouldn’t sit right.

“Only everyone,” the Autobot replied genially, “I just… I wonder how many bots ended up dead immediately because I let them out, when maybe, maybe there might have been a rescue a solar cycle later that could have gotten everyone out okay? But I got my brother out, and there was nowhere for us to go but the Autobots. He couldn’t be a Decepticon, and there was nothing else left.”

“Neutrals?” Impactor prompted. He couldn’t say he thought much of fence-sitters, but he’d heard they existed.

The Autobot laughed again, “Hooo yeah, that’s a good one… I was almost a Decepticon. If they’d come for me earlier, I would have been. It’s just… they’ve already done everything I wanted? But they didn’t stop there. The Senate’s dead. They killed Zeta. I wanted that. But they didn’t stop there. I didn’t want Sureplate dead. I sure as slip zones don’t want my brother dead. It’s like… the Decepticons started killing, and they don’t seem to know when to stop. Someone’s got to stop them.”

“So that’s you?” Impactor asked.

“I guess.” The Autobot shrugged.

“You know those bots you freed, every one’s gonna go Decepticon,” Impactor said.

The Autobot shrugged again. “Crest told us to evacuate the city. I figured Garrus-1 counted as part of the city. It’s in the city limits.”

How many other Autobots would even have thought of the prisoners as bots at all? That must have been why the guards had left - left the prisoners to die and gotten themselves out to save themselves from the bombing.

They lapsed back into slogging and the dripping echoes. Impactor had told Megatron just to round up a few hundred miners and take out the Senate. No one knew for sure how the Senate had died, but had Megatron just taken Impactor’s advice? Had he listened when Impactor told him that violence was the only way to accomplish anything?

Was it Impactor’s responsibility that this Autobot’s brother had almost died?

Certainly, if Megatron had gone too far, it was Impactor’s fault. Where else could Megatron have gotten it from?

Three tunnels later, Impactor prompted, “But you’re fighting for the system that put you down a hole and told you to be grateful.”

“That system’s dead. There’s no one left to enforce it. Whatever happens after all of this is going to be different, no matter who wins,” the Autobot said.

They were headed upward now, Impactor could tell. They came up in a warehouse. A white motorcycle Autobot with a Matrix tattoo on his cheek sprang into action, pointing a blaster at Impactor, and he demanded, “Twin Twist, what the slag? You’re _late,_ and you brought a civvie _here_?”

Twin Twist got up in the white Autobot’s face, tipping up on his feet, and he pushed the blaster aside. “We’re leaving anyway, Valve, so it doesn’t matter. His drill’s not sitting right.”

“‘His drill’s not sitting right’,” Valve muttered derisively.

“You wouldn’t get it,” Twin Twist snapped.

“And I sincerely don’t want to,” Valve replied.

There was another Autobot, green and yellow, who looked like he might be a monoformer, and a hulking grey treaded vehicle, a yellow and blue Hydrobot, and then a sporty white, red, and black ambulance Autobot, who sighed. The ambulance Autobot stood off the crate he’d been sitting on and approached Impactor. There was the mark of a medic on him. He offered, “I’m Piston. I can have a look at it, if you’d like. You are…?”

“Impactor,” Impactor replied. Warily, he held out the drill.

Piston was brusque and curt in looking him over, sparing no pain as he pulled and tugged at a number of connections. He frowned, “You have a great deal of poorly repaired damage.”

“Tell me something new,” Impactor grunted.

Piston pulled out a medical kit and a set of adaptors and adjusted the drill, asking, “That better?”

Impactor gave the drill a try and nodded. It did feel better.

“That’s enough,” said the yellow and blue Hydrobot. “We’re done humouring Twin Twist’s stray. Twin Twist, get your gear. We’re going.”

“Where to?” Impactor asked out of idle curiosity.

“Opulus!” Twin Twist replied automatically.

A number of the other Autobots groaned. The Hydrobot glared and directed, motioning with a hand, “Rack, Valve, take… Impactor. We can’t have someone who knows where we’re going. We’ll figure out what we’re doing with him later.”

Impactor put up a good fight but quick enough, Rack - the green monoformer - and Valve had him in an inhibitor claw, and they walked him out of the warehouse. The light hurt his optics - days on Luna-2 were even brighter than they were on Cybertron, with less atmosphere to attenuate the light.

The city around Garrus-1 was an utter wasteland. The warehouse was far out in the suburbs. Not far away, buildings were in shambles, but in the center of the city, there was nothing but a glassed crater. They walked into a dilapidated hangar, and Impactor beheld what had to be a spaceship, though a much nicer one than he had ever seen. They marched him inside. The treaded grey one and the Hydrobot vanished off down another hallway. Valve and Rack threw him into a cell in the ship’s stockade, though Valve took off the inhibitor claw before he did. Twin Twist and Piston hung back, watching.

Valve turned to Piston and said, “You really ought to get that drill off him. We’re not going to be able to keep him in there otherwise.”

“Nice friends you got, Twin Twist,” Impactor grumbled. He examined his cell and touched his wrist self-consciously.

Rack said quickly, “We’re not friends.”

“For pity’s sake, Valve! He’s a civilian, and we just kidnapped him because Twin Twist can’t shut up. The only thing I’m doing is an exam, if he’ll let me, so I can see about what repairs he needs,” Piston replied, arms crossed.

“I got a choice in this?” Impactor asked, though he doubted he did.

“You can decline the exam, though I wouldn’t recommend it,” Piston replied.

“What happens if I ‘decline’?” Impactor demanded.

“What you have gets worse,” Piston said crisply, “Your optics. They focus on near and distant objects, but they aren't reacting to light. You didn’t enjoy going out in the sun, did you?”

Impactor turned away and considered the cell. The light had been a bit painful, not that he wanted to admit it.

“Twin Twist, he’s your problem. Make sure he doesn’t tear off Piston’s face,” Valve said, and he stalked off, Rack with him.

“What are you going to do with me?” Impactor asked. He’d gone with Twin Twist because it looked like the smaller miner had known where he was going. Now he was stuck in whatever this was.

“I don't know that Crest knows. Probably drop you off somewhere after we’re done,” Piston speculated, and he shot a silencing glance at Twin Twist.

“And that’ll take how long…?” Impactor inquired. He folded his arms against his chest and turned back to regard Piston and Twin Twist square on.

“As long as it takes. Do you have somewhere to be?” Piston inquired coolly.

Impactor thought about Garrus-1 and the glassed city. “Nowhere.” He really did have nowhere. He wasn’t going back to the mines, if there were any left. The rumors he’d heard about the war…

What was he going to do with himself? Joining the Decepticons had been the plan, on the off chance he had ever made it out of Garrus-1, and he had as much as told Twin Twist that, but Piston looked quicker on the uptake, so Impactor wasn’t going to say so around the medic.

Now, though, maybe joining the Decepticons wasn’t what he needed to do. Maybe he just needed to find Megatron and talk to him and… What was he going to accomplish? Impactor had told Megatron that talking wouldn’t solve anything.

“I guess being in better health couldn’t hurt,” Impactor admitted.

Twin Twist laughed for some reason Impactor couldn’t fathom. Piston opened the cell door cautiously and entered. Impactor thought about how he could rush Piston and throw him into Twin Twist and then he could get gang-beaten by the rest of them, so he didn’t.

“When was your last check up?” Piston asked.

Impactor stared at him.

Twin Twist supplied helpfully, “We didn’t have check ups.”

“I was seen at Deltaran once,” Impactor said, “When I was topside.”

“I won’t be able to pull the records from there, anyway. Tell me, how are you feeling, overall?” Piston asked.

Impactor narrowed his optics. “Like putting my fist in your face.”

“Hmm. Don’t do that. Any pain anywhere? Discomfort?” Piston said. He shrugged off the threat like sluice mud, as if he heard similar often.

If Impactor was feeling pain, he wasn’t going to admit it to a stranger, so despite his aches, he grunted a no.

Piston continued on with questioning Impactor about all his bodily systems, going top down. Then he wanted to know if Impactor had any allergies or if he’d ever reacted poorly to a medication. Impactor neglected to mention a few of the bad trips he had suffered. Piston asked about family, too, to which Impactor barked, “I’m constructed cold,” and he looked over at Twin Twist, who shifted from one foot to the other. Constructive cold could have elective family, which mattered just as much to them, even if no one else acknowledged it, but it didn't have the potential medical implications of a forged's family.

Then Piston wanted to know if Impactor felt safe in his living space, to which Impactor could only incredulously reply, “The place just got glassed. Isn’t that kind of obvious?”

“Er, true. I guess, I mean, what’s your social support network like?” Piston retried.

Impactor stared at him.

“If something were to happen to you…” Piston prompted.

“I’d probably be dead?” Impactor filled in, baffled.

“Did anyone ever make you feel unsafe or hurt you or belittle you?” Piston asked.

Impactor stared some more and twitched. “All the time?” Granted, he did the same. Whirl wasn’t the only bot on his slag list.

Piston fidgeted. “I should say that there are resources available to you to help you out of this situation, but uh. We're probably just going to drop you somewhere. So. I can get you some data files on avoiding abusive relationships, if you think that’d be useful…” He took the silence as a hint. “If you ever want them, just let me know. Anyway. What do you do for fun?”

Impactor stared up at the ceiling. “Get wasted. Pick fights.”

“How much do you drink?” Piston said.

“If I can remember how much I had, it wasn’t enough,” Impactor snorted.

“Any recreational substances?” Piston paused and then clarified. “Street drugs or drugs which were not prescribed to you.”

Impactor narrowed his optics.

Piston put up his hands. “I don't care. I’m not making a moral judgement. I’m not going to narc you out unless, heh, you murdered and ate someone or something.”

“Is that something that happens often?” Impactor sputtered.

“A few times,” Piston admitted, rubbing the back of his head, and he shot a silencing glare at Twin Twist, who looked ready to interject.

Impactor sighed, “Yeah. Some street drugs. Sometimes. Mainly syk. Some other circuit boosters. There's this little green one I like…” Sometimes, he’d be starving, and it’d take the edge off. Sometimes, he was bored out of his helmet. Sometimes, it lessened the pain of whatever injury he had half-healing.

“How do you take it?” Piston asked, and he did seem neutral,

“However it comes?” Impactor gestured. “Sometimes it’s a powder, sometimes a liquid, sometimes I shoot it up…”

“How’s your sex life?” Piston said, like he was discussing the weather.

Impactor felt poleaxed. “We gotta discuss this?” He looked over at Twin Twist. Did he have to be there?

“It’s relevant to your health, and you said you'd like to punch me, so.” Piston shrugged and put his hands up, as if he justified Twin Twist’s presence as insurance of his own safety.

“I wanna punch you more now,” Impactor growled and then demanded of Twin Twist, “He do all this with you?”

“Yep! About once a stellar cycle. Has to make sure I’m in fighting trim,” Twin Twist replied, “You haven’t even gotten to the physical exams yet.”

“Slagging great,” Impactor mumbled. “Anyway, I’m…” It struck him then like a mine collapse. Was he even in a relationship? With the bot who was apparently ripping the whole planet up? Because of what Impactor had said when wasted. “...I don't want to talk about it.”

“Total partners?” Piston asked, going generic.

“Seven,” Impactor answered, shrugging.

“What kinds of sex acts?” Piston said.

Impactor’s fan started running, his embarrassment bubbling up to the surface like crude oil. “Uhm. Just normal stuff.” Piston kept looking at him. “Probes and ports? Both modes. Mouths. Hands. Sometimes exhaust pipes.”

“Do you use any form of protection?” Piston said.

“No. Where would I get it?” Impactor snapped. Megatron had gone on about this. They didn’t sell protection down in the mines, because no one was supposed to be frakking, and if they didn’t provide easy access to protection, then the mines weren’t encouraging frakking. But really what they ended up encouraging was terribly unsafe sex, which was fine by the mine administrators, who didn’t give two slags about safety. Impactor could have gotten some on the rare occasions he went topside, but the prices were exorbitant, and he had better things to do with the credits he didn’t have, like blow them on energon and circuit boosters.

“There used to be clinics that gave it out free… I’ll get you set up with something before we’re done,” Piston said, “I’m going to draw some labs and run some scans so those can process while I perform the physical examinations.”

Piston took an energon sample and some metal scrapings and popped them into a little medical analyzer from his medical kit. Then he checked Impactor’s senses. Piston seemed to be trying to keep a Praxus Fold ‘Em face, but frowns slipped in here and there, which made Impactor uneasy. What was wrong with him, after all? Piston had said something about his optics… Piston checked reflexes and then strength, opposing Impactor’s motor groups with his own. It turned out the medic was a great deal stronger than he looked, though not a match for Impactor.

Piston admitted, “Don’t get a name like Piston without some horsepower,” but the way Twin Twist couldn’t help snickering, Impactor thought there was something more going on there.

Impactor transformed, and Piston examined all of Impactor’s alternate mode, even his exhaust piped, testing his traction and towing capacity. Piston was, for his own part, a suspiciously sporty ambulance.

Piston palpated all over Impactor’s body, asking if anything hurt or felt off. A few things did, but Impactor didn’t say as much. Eventually, Piston asked, “Would you please lay down and relax your legs to the sides?” At that, he pulled out a tarp.

“What,” Impactor said flatly.

“I need to examine your probe and port and any other retractables you may have. They’re an important part of your health,” Piston said, as if this was obvious.

“He’s making this up,” Impactor accused, looking at Twin Twist.

“It’s a part of the standard physical exam he does every stellar cycle, and it’s the same as the one I got when I joined the Autobots,” Twin Twin said, fidgeting.

“ _Why_ ,” Impactor demanded.

“Because it’s important for your health!” Piston repeated, “I already looked at your exhaust pipes in alternate mode.”

Twin Twist looked shifty and admitted, “Because I got metal shrapnel stuck in my port.”

Impactor slapped his hand against his face and groaned, “Too much information.” He lay down on the cell’s floor - no energon stains, no graffiti, he noted - and grudgingly opened up his legs. Impactor wouldn’t call it relaxing.

Then Piston tried to drape the tarp over Impactor’s knees, thighs, and middle. Impactor batted it away, and Piston protested, “But it’s for your privacy!”

“Because I’m going to be offended by seeing my own junk?” Impactor asked, flummoxed. Autobots made no slagging sense at all.

Piston knelt there on the floor and seemed to think about that. “I will note that the patient has refused the privacy tarp.” He let that hang a moment and then asked, “Could I see your probe and any other probes you may use?”

Because Impactor definitely had the credits to buy extra probes. He extended his probe out, the overlapping metal plates floppy, not pressurized by his hydraulic systems, because this was one of the least sexy situations Impactor could imagine. The Garrus-1 cooler was infinitely more erotic. Piston pulled on a set of gloves and examined Impactor’s probe critically. He didn’t say anything, but Impactor imagined that Piston was thinking about diameters and angles of curvature and what the wear marks and dents indicated…

“Could I check the mount for it?” Piston asked.

“Knock yourself out,” Impactor said, and he wished that Piston would. He unlatched the probe and let Piston examine the mount. Then he latched it back on, and Piston checked the connection, asking more questions about if Impactor had any difficulty sustaining an erection or problems with pain or unusual electrical discharge…

Then Piston held up an odd implement, like two partial tubes that hinged together and could ratchet up away from each other. It was made of a tough, clear plastic and had a light on it. He explained calmly, “This is a speculum. I’m going to use it to examine your port. If you have a dentata, I need you to turn it off now.”

“You sure you’re not an interrogator?” Impactor groaned. Also, what was with Piston thinking he could afford things like a dentata?

Piston looked offended and said hotly, “No, Rack usually does that. Sometimes Valve.”

Twin Twist elbowed Piston hard in the shoulder, grumbling, “And I blab a lot?”

“Oh whatever,” Piston mumbled, “Like anyone couldn’t figure out ‘cop’ just by looking at Valve.” He introduced a gloved finger at the bottom of Impactor’s port, tugging down, and with his other hand, he went in with the speculum at about a 45 degree angle, then pushing it in and straightening it out. This was not comfortable, and Impactor squirmed. He’d never had proper lube, but sometimes, he could snag some drill grease, and oh Mortilus, he wished he had some of that now.

Then Piston ratcheted the speculum open wide, and Impactor bucked, kneeing Piston in the face. Piston’s optics flashed, and he cursed, “Ow! What the slag?”

Impactor gritted out, “You can’t tell me that hasn’t happened before.”

“Urgh. Yes,” Piston admitted. “I suppose I’m lucky you don’t have spikes on your knees. I hate that. Now let’s have a look.” He did, and he pulled out a long brush and took another scraping, and Impactor’s thighs clamped down on Piston, eliciting a pained _urk_. “That’s… also happened.”

“And that’s why my drills are on my back now, instead of in my thighs!” Twin Twist chipped in.

Impactor did not need that mental image.

Piston put the scrapings in his analyzer and then backed the speculum out, keeping it open until he had it out. At that point, he grabbed a tube of clear goo and rubbed it over his gloves. “Now I need to do the bimanual exam. Er. An exam with both my hands. I can sometimes pick up a tumor that way.”

“What is that stuff?” Impactor gestured at the goo.

“Lubricant,” Piston said, introducing two fingers into Impactor’s port and placing another on his abdomen. Impactor’s port cramped down hard on Piston’s fingers, irritated, and Piston winced again.

“You _sure_ you’re not an interrogator? Was there _any_ reason you couldn’t use lube before the speculum?” Impactor said, feeling like Piston had deserved that.

“Yes, actually,” Piston said curtly, “The lubricant interferes with analysis of the metal scrapings.” He pushed his fingers in all the way and pushed hard to one side, his other hand pushing down. Impactor cramped again then and again a third time when Piston did the other side.

Piston pulled out, changed his gloves, and said, “You have an exhaust pipe back here.”

“And you want to put something in it,” Impactor said tiredly, opening it. Piston lubed his glove again and slid in one finger as deep as he could, then curled it forward. Impactor cramped. Piston felt a bit longer, and Impactor’s engine picked up just a bit. Then Piston pulled out, disposed of his gloves, and turned to examine the results from his analyzer. Impactor retracted everything, closed himself, and sat up.

Piston took a moment to compose himself and then reported, “You have tantalis. We’re going to need to contact your partners to inform them that they will likely -”

Impactor bolted up and loomed over the kneeling Piston. “No. I don’t have tantalis.” He’d seen bots go blind and grow strange masses that warped their armour and lose control of their limbs. Their fuel pumps went out. They left their minds behind in the tunnels. They never so much died of tantalis as they became useless and then an accidental-on-purpose cave-in did them in and there was the administration, greedy cryo-condors, piecing out whatever valuable parts were left. Impactor didn’t have tantalis. That wasn’t going to happen to him.

“I understand the diagnosis can be upsetting, but -” Piston tried.

“I don’t have tantalis,” Impactor repeated. They called it “bad energon”, sometimes. The miners who knew a bit about repairs, when they tried to treat it, they’d give the unlucky miner a king hit of mercury, if they could get it, or a dip in the smelting pool if they couldn’t. The cure was worse than the disease.

“...it’s just a few injections to fix,” Piston said firmly.

“Injections?” Impactor echoed, dumbfounded, “Since when?”

Piston’s optics cycled a blink. “It’s been standard treatment since I started training? That was back during Sentinel’s time.”

“You don’t have to dip me in a smelting pool?” Impactor asked, crossing his arms and hugging himself.

“What would I _do_ that?” Piston asked incredulously.

“Dope me up with so much mercury my semiconductors all run into each other?” Impactor said.

“...no, where did you hear this?” Piston demanded, frowning, “It’s just a series of a few shots and monitoring to make sure you clear the infection. If that doesn’t work, I’ll give it to you directly into a line for ten solar cycles. You may feel some nausea. More serious side effects are rare.”

“There’s a cure,” Impactor stated, fingers twitching and drill spinning slowly as anger pierced his shock, “There’s a cure, it’s easy, and it’s been around a long time.”

“Yes?” Piston supplied, watching Impactor warily.

Impactor turned and slammed the drill into the wall. “Rrgh!” How many bots did he know that had died for absolutely no good reason? How many more could he add to the list now, knowing what he’d just learned? He pulled back and examined the damage to the wall, taking a moment to cycle his coolant. Piston still knelt on the floor with his kit and his analyzer. Twin Twist twitched, his own drills spinning slightly. Impactor turned back to them, looked at his drill, and shrugged, as if to say that these kinds of things - _drilling out the wall_ \- happen sometimes.

“As I was saying, we need to contact your partners,” Piston started again, gently.

“Can’t,” Impactor said hoarsely. Bombmix and Trailcrusher were definitely dead. Impactor had seen what was left of their bodies. Twinblast and Streetknife were maybe dead. He had never seen the bodies, but there’d been cave-ins. Arrowshift and Flakrack had been sent off to other mines, and Impactor had never heard where.

Megatron was Megatron.

And slot, if Megatron had tantalis, too, and his mind was going...

“I don’t… I don’t have contact information. Some of them are dead. I don’t know where the others are,” Impactor said, and he hated how weak his voice sounded.

“I could see if any of them went Autobot,” Piston offered.

Impactor mumbled, “They wouldn’t have.”

Piston stood and said, “Let’s get you started on your shots, then, and I can talk to you about protection options.”

Impactor held out his arm and pushed back some of the treads off to the sides. He knew where the good spots for injecting were, though Piston took time, examining the site and then wiping it clean with some ethanol before he gave Impactor his first shot. It wasn’t the fun kind, but he didn’t feel the nausea Piston had warned about.

Then Piston pulled out a package of what were labeled as firewall caps. He opened one and unfurled it. There was a little blunt frustum of plastic and metal, and then a cylinder of stretchy material came off its back. Piston explained, “The cap part snaps onto the tip of a probe, and the rest of it covers the shaft of the probe. The cap prevents the electrical emission at orgasm from spreading any viruses, malware, spyware, or trojans to the receiving partner. The partner using the probe can still orgasm normally. The receiving partner won’t feel that electric tingle but will also be able to orgasm normally. Covering the shaft prevents the natural lubrication produced by an aroused port from seeping between the interlocking plates of the shaft, preventing the communication of infections spread by natural lubricant. Firewall caps should be used for all penetrative probe sex, no matter what the probe is penetrating. Unless you and your partner know each other’s communicable status and find it acceptable. Here’s a box of different sizes, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding one that fits you or your partners. They’re single use, and they do expire.”

Impactor took the box, frowning thoughtfully. He stashed it in his leg compartment, next to the pistol. Feeling awkward, he asked, “You said both bots can still come, but… doesn’t it mess with sensation?”

“Some bots may report somewhat diminished sensation, but masturbating with a firewall cap on can help a bot adjust,” Piston explained.

Impactor wasn’t going to waste a firewall cap masturbating with it.

Piston pulled out another box of what looked like stretchy squares of material sealed in little packages. “These are dental dams. You can use them to protect your or your partner’s mouth from fluid contact while giving or getting oral sex.” He did a tame little demonstration.

Impactor put that box away in his other leg.

“Now, I understand that there can be times when you might not be in a safe situation where you can negotiate the use of a firewall cap, so I wanted to discuss an internal firewall with you. They’re cheap and effective ways of preventing the transmission of disease. They last a few thousand years, too, before you have to have them replaced, though it does take an internal installation.” Piston unfurled one. It looked similar to the firewall cap. “The tip here locks onto the back of your port and prevents electrical transmission. The rest of it covers under your internal interlocking plates. It doesn’t show from the outside, and your partners shouldn’t notice anything. Would you be interested in having this sort of thing installed?”

“Because I haven’t had enough weird things in my port today?” Impactor said tiredly, “I mean… what’s it feel like?”

“It was annoying for a few solar cycles, but I don’t even notice mine now,” Piston admitted.

Impactor was startled by that and had to ask, “What, do you all use them?”

“Oh, not all of us, but for me, it works nicely,” Piston said, shrugging.

“Let me think about that,” Impactor decided.

“There’s similar internal stripping for exhaust pipes, too, if you do decide on it, and… I should get you a box of gloves and some data tracks on safer sex that you can read at your leisure. Could you lend me your datapad, and I could get it uploaded?” Piston asked.

Impactor tilted his head to one side. The only reason he could read was because Megatron had taught him because Megatron wanted him to read his poetry. Megatron had saved and scrimped forever to buy that used datapad of his. “I don’t have a datapad.”

“...oh. Uhm. I think I have it formatted for direct downloads, too, if you just want to read it in your head,” Piston offered, looking contrite as he handed Impactor a box of gloves.

“Are you going to take my drill off?” Impactor asked instead. Piston seemed to be running out of things to do, which would mean that Impactor soon would be locked back in this cell.

“You did drill a hole in the wall,” Piston pointed out neutrally.

Twin Twist cleared static from his voice box, for some reason.

Impactor tried to think things, through, which was difficult. He tried to avoid situations where he had to think with anything other than his fists. Being wasted was easy. Thinking reminded him of Megatron, and what had happened with Megatron? Impactor didn’t even know. “This spaceship’s under way, yeah? I mean, if I drill out, I’m just gonna end up in space, run out of energy, and that’s… that. If I attack anyone, the lot of you are gonna come and sack beat me. So. I’ll be… good. I won’t drill anything. I won’t hurt anyone.”

“I’ll take that, then,” Piston said crisply. Then he pulled out his datapad, queued up some downloads, and held out the cable to Impactor. “I’m including information on energon and drug abuse and how to escape abusive relationships, too. If you have any questions or want to talk, I’ll be around next solar cycle to check how you’re responding to the medication.”

Impactor took the downloads and grunted. Piston backed out, locked up the cell, and turned to depart. Twin Twist paused and said, “Sorry about this. But we really will drop you off somewhere. I’ll make sure of that. And at least you didn’t get blown up, huh?”

Impactor grunted again. He spent some time staring at the floor. Then Impactor hunkered down in alternate mode and caught some defrag.

He awoke to the ship red-lit and the sirens blaring. It reminded him a little of the lockdowns during riots on Garrus-1. Impactor transformed and stood, looking out the little window on his cell, trying to figure out what was happening. An awful lot of things could go wrong on a spaceship, or so he heard. The grey tank-thing Autobot came thundering down the hallway, and his cannon retorted at something out of Impactor’s admittedly limited visual field.

Impactor took a few steps back, finding himself up against the back of the cell wall. An assailant with a smoking hole in his torso leapt on the Autobot and bent his cannon barrel up. The Autobot transformed and flung the assailant down the hallway. The acrid smell of weapon smoke hit Impactor, and the clatter and clang of combat echoed down the hallway, even as the fight moved out of his view. Distantly, there was shouting. Impactor itched, feeling like he ought to be doing _something_.

There was more shouting and weapons fire and crashes…

Eventually, it was quiet. The lights returned to their usual white. The sirens stopped. Eventually, the grey Autobot came back. One of his set of treads was off and had been used to throttle someone - a Decepticon - the corpse of whom the Autobot dragged behind him. The Autobot rapped on Impactor’s cell and asked, “You okay there?”

Impactor had no idea how to answer that.

The Autobot continued, “Just a boarding, we get that all the time. You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”

Offended anger surged in Impactor, and he spat, “You think… you think I’d _snitch_? You know my radio’s offline, right? Couldn’t if I wanted to.”

“Piston do that?” the grey Autobot inquired idly.

Piston hadn’t disabled Impactor’s radio. Garrus-1 had. Piston had just left it disabled. Impactor crossed his arms and was silent.

The grey Autobot dragged off the Decepticon corpse, leaving a smear of energon down the hallway.

Much later, Piston came by. He cleaned up the floor and then greeted, “How are you doing, Impactor? I know there was a bit of a commotion…”

Impactor looked at Piston. The medic was covered with energon of several different shades, so it couldn’t all be his own. Impactor thought about how the medic packed more horsepower than he had a right to. His optics narrowed. Impactor said blandly, “Fine.”

Piston wiped himself down and said, “Good to hear it. Now, let’s check your response to the medication. Feeling any side effects?” He opened the door and stepped inside, reaching for Impactor’s arm to do an energon draw.

Impactor grunted a negatory.

“You read any of that information I sent you? Want to talk about anything?” Piston inquired. He slotted the energon sample into his analyzer and took a few more scans. Then he carefully opened up one of Impactor’s panels and examined his radio again.

Impactor accused, “You think I snitched.”

“I think Crest told me to check your radio again,” Piston said carefully.

“You didn’t bring Twin Twist as a guard,” Impactor observed.

Piston shrugged. Changing the conversation, he offered, “Could I get you some entertainment? I have some magazines you could download.”

“You do that for all your prisoners?” Impactor said dubiously.

“There are regulations on how prisoners should be treated. I have to keep them safe and offer them medical care. I cannot force them to work without pay. Those sorts of things. I don’t have to offer you magazines, but…” Piston shifted looking awkward, “You really shouldn’t be a prisoner.”

“So let me out,” Impactor said. Couldn’t it be just as simple as that?

“This is a military vessel. You could easily see or hear things we don’t want you to, and as you maybe just saw,” Piston looked over at the floor where the energon stain had been until he’d cleaned it up, “it’s dangerous on here. Your response to the medication looks good. I’ll be back next solar cycle.”

Piston left the cell and locked it again.

Impactor defragged. Being able to catch rest was a luxury in the mines, but in prison, it was often the only thing to do. Piston woke him up for another check and gave him some energon, as his scans now said that Impactor was unacceptably low by their guidelines. Impactor had certainly been hungrier before, but he was never one to turn down fuel. The energon was fine, not like the swill they served down in the mines, but certainly bland. Piston asked again if Impactor wanted any magazines. Impactor said maybe, and Piston left again. Impactor defragged more.

Valve came by. He was that white motorcycle. Valve did scream cop, looking at him. Impactor noticed new weld lines on him, carefully buffed down and painted over but there all the same. Valve must have been in that boarding fight, too. Valve leaned up close at the window and hissed, “I know what you are. You aren’t fooling anyone.”

“And what’s that?” Impactor asked, staring Valve down.

Valve narrowed his optics, pointed at Impactor, pointed back at his optics, and stalked off.

Impactor defragged. Piston was back again, now with Twin Twist, who stank of mostly-set epoxy and who was riddled with weld lines, as if he’d been torn apart and put back together. Was that why Twin Twist hadn’t been back?

Twin Twist offered, “I have some magazines about mining and drills!”

“Yeah. Okay,” Impactor said. Maybe it’d make them go away.

Piston took his samples. Impactor defragged. He opened one of Twin Twist’s magazines. Impactor’s optics brightened. Okay, this was… this was… a very _tasteful_ arrangement of sluicing mud on that drill… Who made these things? Was there really enough of a market that they’d make...

“Did you like the magazines?” Twin Twist asked, the next time he visited.

Impactor fidgeted with his drill and nodded.

“Great! I have loads of these things if you want more. Topspin used to get them for me,” Twin Twist said, “and everyone loved it when I’d share them around.”

“Your brother?” Impactor asked. Had to be.

“Oh, yeah, guess I hadn’t mentioned his name,” Twin Twist said.

It was Megatron, stirring in the back of his head. There used to be comics passed around the mines, some crudely drawn, some better, but they weren’t like these glossy magazines. They didn’t have _production value_ . They didn’t take his broken burdened back and make it _beautiful._ Twin Twist wasn’t the target audience. Impactor wasn’t. Who was? “Who were these magazines made for?”

“Ooooh, Topspin says some of the upper classes, they had kinks. Not like bends? It’s like… they like a thing they’re not supposed to like? I dunno. I guess they liked looking at us, some of them,” Twin Twist speculated, rubbing his chin.

Piston was carefully quiet.

“Only it’s not _us_. I never looked that good the day I was constructed,” Impactor said bitterly.

“You want more magazines?” Twin Twist asked.

“Yeah, hit me.”

Impactor defragged.

An explosion woke him, and for a moment, Impactor was back in the mines, buried under a cave in and crushed by the knowledge that no one would bother to dig him out. It was only a wall that had fallen on him, though, molten metal stinging and hot on his frame. Impactor wriggled his way out and saw a Decepticon who could have come from the same batch as Impactor coming at him. He protested, “Hey!”

The Decepticon cracked Impactor over the head, hard, with a club that sent Impactor’s vision spinning and his audios ringing. Impactor came at the Decepticon with fist and drill. The Decepticon caught Impactor with a kick that shattered his wrist off. Reeling, he reached down into his leg for the pistol and pulled the box of firewall caps out by mistake. Impactor flung it at the Decepticon, anyway, which momentarily puzzled the Decepticon. Fumbling for the pistol, he got it out and fired it into the Decepticon until he stopped moving and the colour faded from his paint and the light went out in his optics.

Impactor’s hand shook, and he told himself it was just the concussion and the energon loss that was still dribbling from his shattered drill-wrist. He’d tried to kill before, but someone had always stepped in to stop him. Now he’d finally gone and done it, and the victim was someone just like him, who hadn’t even had it coming, no bully soldier at a topside bar, no pistol-whipping supervisor, no corrupt cop…

There was Rack, rushing through the breach. He took in Impactor and the dead Decepticon in an instant and said, “Sweet,” and kept on running.

Impactor made himself run, having no idea where he was going or what he was doing. He found what was clearly a rec room, lived in, homey, with a big basket of metal shavings in one corner, and was about to hide under one of the tables - hide under the table, it was what Megatron would have done - when Impactor saw the dartboard and a dozen darts clustered between Megatron’s optics.

He kicked the table into the dartboard.

Then someone tackled Impactor from behind, and he kicked back into him. He squirmed and twisted, got the pistol around and fired again, only to be knifed, deep, hard, and searing.

Life went dark for a while.

Impactor woke up strapped down to a medical berth and thought he was in Deltaran again or perhaps that he’d never left. Everything hurt. The Hydrobot who Impactor was starting to think had to be Crest was shouting at Piston, “You let him have a pistol?”

“It’s dangerous on here!” Piston shouted back, “If he hadn’t had that pistol, he’d be dead. Anyway, he had that pistol when we grabbed him, and frankly, I don’t think he knows how to use it very well. Emptying a half clip into one Decepticon?”

One berth over, there was a pile of Twin Twist pieces that had been partially reassembled. Two berths over, there was Rack, sitting up and polishing an anvil. Three berths over, Valve was writing something on a datapad.

The grey treaded Autobot was up and opined, “If he kills Decepticons, I don’t see the problem.”

Piston turned to check a monitor and then looked at Impactor, “Oh, you’re up! You killed someone. Have you done that before? Do you need to talk about it?”

Impactor flexed weakly against his restraints but couldn’t manage coherent speech. All that came out was a gurgling noise.

The grey Autobot laughed and gave him a nod, “What the bot needs, Piston, is a drink. I’ll buy him one when we touch down.”

Speech coalesced. “Deal.” Impactor had killed a Decepticon that looked just like him and here he was, planning on taking a drink from an Autobot for doing the deed.

“You shouldn’t encourage him, Hyperion,” Valve said dourly, “I don’t think Twin Twist’s ever told us what this… Impactor was doing with him, anyway.”

The Hydrobot who had to be Crest said firmly, “I told Twin Twist to evacuate the city. He did.”

Hyperion walked over to the other side of the medical berth, opposite where Piston was fussing over readings. He asked, “You thought about joining up, civvie?”

“The Autobots?” Impactor asked. He hadn’t thought that at all.

Hyperion shot a sly look at Crest. “Well.”

Impactor’s head hurt and the medical ward lights were too bright. Why were they always so slagging bright? “Hnnn… you’re not… Autobots?”

There was silence. Piston adjusted something, and Impactor felt his pain subside, though it got harder to think. Hyperion gave Impactor a pat on the shoulder and said, “Think about it. Could use another driller.”

Life was black again.

“Think I gave you too much painkiller, there. It’s difficult to figure out dosage. Those with a history of drug use often have a heightened tolerance for painkillers, so I went a bit high trying to make you comfortable, I’m afraid,” Piston said apologetically. Crest, Hyperion, Rack, and Valve were out of the medical ward. Twin Twist was back together, sitting on a berth, looking at something on a datapad.

“S’okay,” Impactor said groggily. He gave up on trying to sort things out. “What happened?”

“Another boarding attempt. Crest got your assailant in the rec room. I’m serious, if there’s anything you’d like to talk about, I’m all audios. A first kill is always difficult, especially when you aren’t made for it,” Piston said sympathetically.

Impactor thought about that and then blurted, startled, “You’ve killed?”

Piston rubbed the back of his helmet, suppressing a smile.

Twin Twist piped up, “Piston’s got the third best kill total on the ship. _Bzow, headshot._ ” He made little pistol fingers.

“You’re a medic,” Impactor croaked, thinking about Piston’s complaints about Impactor’s aim. He thought about all the different colours of energon he’d seen on Piston that one time.

Piston cleared static from his voicebox. “Yes. Well. Things are… different, in this unit. I have my sidearm, I can defend my patients, and as my patients continually run headlong into danger...” He looked at Twin Twist.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Impactor said, with finality. He didn’t want to admit what he’d done, even to himself. He wasn’t going to talk about it with an Autobot who couldn’t possibly understand.

It struck him that Twin Twist might, but Impactor didn’t want to talk about it with him, either. Impactor laid back on the berth, not struggling against the bonds, and he read a magazine. Then he defragged.

Piston was gone. Twin Twist was still there. Hyperion poked his head into the medical ward and addressed Twin Twist, “Distress call. We’re putting the _Xantium_ down. You stay here and man the ship. Piston says you’re not medically cleared for action, anyway.”

“Aw!” Twin Twist protested.

Then Hyperion was gone. Twin Twist addressed the ceiling, “Okay, _Xantium_ , put yourself on lockdown once they’re all out, auto-defenses on high. Let me know if anything comes up.”

Impactor gave Twin Twist an odd look, which Twin Twist didn’t notice.

A pleasant synthesized voice said, “Acknowledged.”

Twin Twist made a disgusted noise, “Ugh, flippin’ epoxy, taking time to cure. This blows.” He flopped back down on his medical berth.

Impactor took a moment, taking stock of himself. Nothing hurt much, though he had some dull aches. Piston had replaced his shattered wrist with a new drill. Most of his old injuries seemed to be been repaired neatly. Shaking his legs told him that he still had items in the compartments down there. He still had some magazines he hadn’t read; Twin Twist really did have a lot of them. There were also the pamphlets that Piston had given him. Impactor thought that he’d have to be really, really bored to be tempted to read those.

He brought up some of Megatron’s poetry that he had saved.

_Do you know what it's like on the outside?_

_Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide..._

Twin Twist wandered off somewhere, and Impactor wondered how hard it would be to break his restraints. Not that hard, he didn’t think. They’d landed on a planet, it sounded like. He could just get out and go… nowhere, with no credits.

Twin Twist returned with the basket of metal shavings from the rec room and jumped inside, transforming. He _vroomed_ his drills and splashed around in the shavings. That was slotting weird, Impactor thought, but sometimes bots just went… _off_ , like that.

_In the event of something happening to me_

_there is something I would like you all to see_

_It's just a holograph of someone that I knew_

Impactor couldn’t say when Twin Twist’s radio crackled to life. A radio could be silenced to be heard internally only, but apparently Twin Twist hadn’t done that. It sounded like Crest, //Ran into a trap. Come help.//

//Gotcha!// Twin Twist replied aloud. He popped out of his basket of metal shavings and into robot mode. He ran past Impactor’s berth and hit a switch, retracting the restraints. “C’mon. I can’t leave you alone in the ship.”

Impactor got up and stretched out, evaluating his aches and pains again now that he was moving. He’d had worse. If he went out with Twin Twist, he had the option of bolting. Impactor went.

Twin Twist issued some more commands to the _Xantium_ and hustled them out of the ship. Impactor found himself on a world with a beige-yellow sky. The gravity felt about like Cybertron’s. Smoke rose from distant fires all around the horizon. He could smell the smoke, even here, and sulphur was heavy in the air, but beyond that, he couldn’t describe the smell at all. They stood on a plateau of windswept stone. It felt sedimentary, crumbly and gritty under his feet. Nothing had ever looked or felt so strange to Impactor, not even the hallucinations he’d had on bad trips.

Twin Twist nudged him and said, “First time out of the Hadeen System?”

Impactor nodded. He looked at the plateaus and steppes in the distance, and he had no idea how any of it could have formed. When he looked at the stone particulate his feet scuffed up, Impactor couldn’t see how the rock would have gone together. What layers had compressed down to make it, those great stripes and bands he saw? There were structures in the distance, he thought, but he couldn’t tell if they were natural or made by sapient hands. “How... does any of this work?” He picked up a smoothed piece of stone and held it out, feeling mildly offended and unnerved by its existence.

“No clue, I’ll write Topspin and ask him to explain it if you really wanna know. Anyway, just stick behind me or whatever cover you can find. Let’s go,” Topspin said.

He transformed and skidded down the side of the plateau. Against his better judgement, Impactor followed. Wind ripped around them, and as he skidded down, Impactor wasn’t sure if he’d ever actually been that high up, just standing on a free structure, aside from being penned up in some spaceship. Particulate kicked up as they skidded down, choking his fans and dusting his optics. He spent a moment doubled over, hacking up his fans clean and wiping at his optics, and then he transformed and trundled after Twin Twist, who was certainly moving slowly to let Impactor keep up. The tension in his treads felt off for whatever alien weirdness he was driving over.

They approached a group of those structures, whatever they were, ablaze. Even distant, Impactor could feel the heat, and he speculated, “Metal fire. Nasty.”

“Yeah!” agreed Twin Twist and barged right on in.

It took Impactor a while to even figure out what the soft, charred lumps scattered on the dirt were: aliens or, he supposed, the inhabitants of this planet. Impactor was the alien. Every now and then, someone would get a bad resolution copy of an action holo about aliens invading Cybertron. The plot was always the same. Some misfit military caste bot would rally up a group and save the planet, but he was always a misfit in such a careful way - it wasn’t like he’d switched castes or he had a lover from another caste or he had some illness. It was just that his boss didn’t like him for some reason, even though everyone else loved him. Impactor had never related to those holos. Those aliens were fearsome, acid-spewing, and many-tentacled, easily rending Transformers apart. Megatron had once commented that the holos were designed to make Transformers hate that which was different, as if they couldn’t manage that on their own.

These natives were smaller than Twin Twist and looked fragile. They still had their colours, but they had to be dead. Impactor had seen any number of unlikely scrappers, but he had difficulty imagining these things being any danger to anyone. They were round little things, and he thought maybe they were supposed to have eight legs? It was hard to tell; their bodies were so damaged. Impactor had no idea which side was front and which was back or if there even was a front and back. Had they been intelligent or just fauna like turbofoxes?

There was a tall spire of metal rising from the middle of a spiral of structures. There was a fire burning in the middle of it. Above, near the top of the spire, the rest of Twin Twist’s team was strapped to the metal spire. There was a Decepticon not far from the spire who shouted up to the top, “Soon, the fire will have eaten the supports and the whole structure will collapse down into the blaze. You’ll be consumed, and your smelted metal will fuel the Decepticon war machine!”

“Cover. Get some,” Twin Twist directed. In a flash, he’d transformed and drawn a semi-automatic. He snapped off a shot at the Decepticon, which connected, and the Decepticon exploded in a shower of shrapnel.

Impactor took that cover, transforming and hiding behind a small hangar-like structure made out of some ceramic that crumbled at his touch. More Decepticons piled on Twin Twist.  Some looked manual class, but a good half of them had to have been military or security caste. Twin Twist transformed again and drilled through them, emerging from the pile stained in energon. Impactor murmured, “Sick,” but he didn’t take his optics off the spectacle.

Twin Twist transformed again and fired back into the pile. An explosion scattered the Decepticons. Some greyed out, but some got back up and returned fire. Impactor watched Twin Twist yelp and his arm go slack. He gripped the semi-automatic one-handed and sprayed explosive shells at the other Decepticons. A few broke away from the pack, but Impactor didn’t watch them, instead entranced by the violence.

The whole metal spire creaked and groaned, warping in the heat. Impactor wondered who did this kind of thing. Sure, some bots got smelted on the job. Accidents happened. Hand rails cost extra, and no one cared. Who went out of their way to try to smelt bots and then did it in this completely ridiculous way, tying them up to a slowly collapsing spire?

Twin Twist aimed up, hitting the midsection of the spire, and the top fell away, not down into the pit, but onto the rest of… town? Was that what this was? Dust clogged the air, and the spire top bounced and heaved and groaned and rolled over the squat little structures.

Impactor turn away and curled up, wiping his optics, hoping it wouldn’t roll over him, but it stopped. He looked up and saw a Decepticon standing over him, drawing as the dust cleared. Impactor thought with his fist, decking the Decepticon and then following up with his drill. The con fell at his feet, brain module cored out, and Impactor saw the wings and build that marked a military caste soldier, the kind that liked to slum in dive bars and make trouble.

He felt high, like he’d had a hit of the bitter, lurid green circuit booster that came in bottles marked with a mysterious, flirtatious green helicopter. Impactor felt _good_. He knew that he should have felt horrified at the violence, that it wasn’t supposed to solve anything, and instead, it was everything he’d ever fantasized that it might be when he had his wrist around Whirl’s neck. It slagging well solved the problem of cons trying to kill him for just sitting around hiding and minding his own business!

Impactor looked back to the battle. Decepticons were still piling on Twin Twist. In the spire crash, Valve had gotten loose from his bonds and now stood with his back to Twin Twist, covering him with his sidearm. Valve snapped, “Nice job getting us almost squished!”

“Because you wanted to be smelted. C’mon, I’m a demolitionist, I knew how that was gonna fall,” Twin Twist retorted, the most delighted smile on his face.

“You both can still be smelted,” said a Decepticon, who got in close and slammed an elbow into Twin Twist. There was disconcerting cracking noise, and a large chunk of Twin Twist’s torso came away.

A clean shot nailed the Decepticon between the optics. Piston, still half bound and stuck to the side of the collapsed spire, had a hand free and steady on his pistol. He hollered, “I warned you about the epoxy cure time!” Another shot, and another Decepticon fell.

Twin Twist slumped on the ground behind Valve. The other Decepticon that had broken off from the pack came at Impactor. He said, “Two tracks of treads in the dust, just one pipsqueak - didn’t think so!”

He shot Impactor in the abdomen. Impactor jerked at the sharp, sudden pain and automatically kneed the Decepticon in the face. He brought his arms together and down on the back of the Decepticon’s head, driving his face down harder into his knee. As the the Decepticon fell aside, Impactor clutched his abdomen, doubling over. How was he supposed to join the Decepticons when they kept trying to kill him? What were they even doing on this strange planet?

This wasn’t the point. This had never been the point. The point was equality and fairness and _justice_ … not scrapping in the dust and tying bots to death-rigs and _dying_ so far from Primus below…

But Impactor would be damned if it didn’t feel good, that second body at his feet, good enough to take the sting off the smoking wound in his middle. Perhaps he was damned, telling Megatron that violence was the only solution and giving him that bad energon that made his optics sting in the light. Bad energon - tantalis - it took the mind, last of all. This was his fault. It was his responsibility. Impactor licked his lips, the acrid smoke and omnipresent dust clinging even to his lips and suffocating on his tongue, the taste indescribable. He swallowed, hard, choking it down, and wiped at his stinging optics with the back of his hand.

It was like he’d just had a hit, and he wanted _more._ Something took Impactor, and he turned and transformed, ramming into the back of a Decepticon. Words he’d read on a cell wall took shape on his lips, hoarse and dry: “ **Wreck and rule!** ”

He backed over the Decepticon he’d just run down, feeling him crunch under his treads. Impactor’s turret swivelled. The cannon was designed for stone-cutting, not the metal of other Transformers, but the crummy ceramic that these odd little huts were made of went up in shards when he fired at it, splashing in the face of a Decepticon who had been trying to aim. A hole soon graced that Decepticon’s head, courtesy of Piston.

“ _What_ did he say?” Crest demanded, still stuck to the ruined spire.

“Catchy,” said Hyperion, in much the same boat.

Piston fully worked his way loose then and let Crest go. The Aquabot jumped down into the fray, slugging Decepticons left and right. Energon kept leaking from Impactor’s wound, and someone got up on him and dug a knife into his treads, slicing one set loose. Crest then jumped that con, tackling him away. Piston released Hyperion and then Rack, who jumped down on Decepticons.

Suddenly, the clamour of battle was replaced by the hiss and roar of blazing fire. The Decepticons weren’t moving anymore. No one was shooting. Impactor could hear his own energon dripping, and his tank felt empty.

Valve nudged Twin Twist and asked, “You alive, there?” Did the ice-energon cop actually care?

“Hhurk… you’re not getting off that easily,” Twin Twist said weakly.

Piston rushed to Twin Twist’s side, checking him over and administering first aid.

Unable to let the exchange slide, Impactor grunted, “What, are you conjunxes?” Maybe he was woozy from the energon loss and the pain, but the thought seemed hilarious.

Twin Twist started howling laughing so hard another seam split, and Piston turned the dirtiest look on Impactor. Twin Twist eventually managed, “Ha ha… oh, no. Valve’s my parole officer!”

“You in the market for one?” Valve asked acidly. He patrolled the battle scene, checking the corpses.

“Wait, you actually got parole?” Impactor sputtered. He thought parole was some fairytale that only happened to upper caste bots.

“Ah, yeah… I mean, Optimus Prime judged me, and I was gonna be executed, but uh… Topspin begged him, and so he got this deal that if I could find a captain who would take me…” Twin Twist rambled.

 _Executed_ , Impactor thought, but he didn’t ask what Twin Twist had done. Twin Twist had never asked Impactor. Instead, he transformed and held his abdomen, the grit in the air irritating against his wound. Then Impactor asked Crest, “So you took him?”

“He applied, we voted on it, and we took him. Valve was already with us, so it was a natural fit,” Crest replied, shrugging, “Twin Twist’s tendency towards unbridled destruction is useful in this field.”

“Hng.” Impactor’s sliced tread hurt, too, and he thought he’d been shot again sometime in the back and hadn’t noticed at first. Maybe it was just the seam from the older knifing acting up? So Crest had taken in a miner with a rap sheet who had maybe done something worse than Impactor, maybe not. What punishment anyone ever got was always a slag-shoot. “What happened here? This planet. These… things.”

“Classified,” Crest said.

“Oh come on… these… native… things. They built this stuff?” Impactor gestured, with his drill, hand staying over his wound. “What were the Decepticons doing here? What was with the whole smelting alive thing?”

“Not to burst your bubble, but that’s what Decepticons do,” Rack snarled bluntly, “I’d know. I _was_ a Decepticon. We were smelting bots alive before the movement even started. It was just how the gladiatorial pits worked. Now the Decepticons take over planets and strip them of useful resources.” He held up his fingers and counted off. “Phase one, infiltration and intelligence gathering. Phase two, agitate existing tensions to try to get the natives to kill themselves. Phases three, four, and five, frak if I know what those are. I left before I got that explanation. Phase six is the end of the world. So the Decepticons came in here and did what they do and killed all these natives and took their stuff.”

“ _Why?_ ” Impactor demanded. All of this hurt worse than his injuries. It was never supposed to be this way. He dimmed his optics. _You are being deceived_. But there were dead natives all around. Maybe the Autobots had killed them and the Decepticons had strung the Autobots up to stop them?

“This one’s alive,” Valve reported, dragging one Decepticon after him. He dropped the Decepticon at Crest’s feet, and Rack gathered at his side. Valve leaned over the Decepticon and trussed him in an inhibitor claw. Then he demanded, “Where are the Autobots who were assigned here?”

“Go look in the fire pit,” the Decepticon spat back. He looked to have been military caste, some sort of jet.

Hyperion loped off and did. “Well. Slag. Looks like we were too late on that distress call… Piston, second opinion, here?”

Piston rose and left Twin Twist’s side to go gaze into the fire pit below the ruined spire. He pulled out his scanner and then pointed, “That one’s still alive, barely.” He switched to his radio, // _Xantium_ , come around. Need a fire put out.//

Impactor hobbled over to the Decepticon to ask a question of his own, croaking out, “You did this? You killed these natives? To take their things?”

The Decepticon looked at Impactor like he wasn’t very smart. He purred, “Of course we did. We’ll do it again. You can’t stop us.”

“You won’t be doing _anything_ in Garrus-9,” Valve said coolly, crossing his arms.

“And I don’t have to. We are legion. You’ll never stop us all,” the Decepticon said, smirking.

“ _Why?_ ” Impactor demanded in pain and frustrating. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because we can,” laughed the Decepticon, and he was every bully Impactor had ever seen.

“I…” the ashes were bitter in his mouth, his fuel tank empty. Megatron’s dream was a nightmare, and Impactor had to take responsibility for his own actions. “Hyperion. You still want that second driller?”

The End

**Notes:**

This story is going to be Jossed so hard, but I just had to write it.

Piston is the red, white, and black robot on the left. I needed a medic for this story, and Piston fit the overall medic colour scheme. With a name like Piston, I was picturing a sports car, so he’s a rather sporty ambulance, quite possibly something like this:

(Source: [ http://www.adriandale.co.uk/index.php/2010/05/01/gumball-3000/ ](http://www.adriandale.co.uk/index.php/2010/05/01/gumball-3000/) )

The way Piston treats Impactor, as his patient, isn’t entirely appropriate, but it’s not supposed to be 100% bad, because this is still fairly early in the war.

Rack is the green and yellow guy on the left. He was a Decepticon. He burned out his transformation. Sometimes he used an anvil as a weapon. His brother, Ruin, would later also join the Wreckers. Then they’d get stuck together. Then they’d die.

Valve is the white guy. He had two brothers, Springarm and Wheelarch, who were killed by Whirl’s rescuers. Springarm was religious. For the purposes of this story, Valve is a police motorcycle like his brothers, and he’s not religious, but he wears a Matrix on his cheek to honour his dead brother. Valve would later defect to the Decepticons, probably because Whirl joined the Wreckers.

The guy at the bottom under Black Shadow is Hyperion. We can’t see too much of him. I think he’s grey, but maybe that’s pastel yellow or green? Or a mix of pastel yellow, green, and grey? Either way, he succeeded Crest as leader of the Wreckers when Crest died, so for this story, Hyperion is the Wrecker second in command. He left the Wreckers either due to a dishonorable discharge, mental illness, or both. Hyperion would later join the _Lost Light_ and die.

Impactor is Impactor.

Crest is the yellow and blue Hydrobot on the right. He led the Wreckers. He died.

There was one other Wrecker in this line-up of the 11th iteration of the Wreckers. We don’t, as of yet, know who that was. It probably wasn’t Twin Twist, but I really wanted Impactor to scope out Twin Twist’s two drills, so for this story, it was Twin Twist.

I am assuming there was a city near Garrus-1 to support the prison.

We’re shown that middle and upper class bots who tried to change their careers faced severe punishments, if we look at Whirl. That was something I kept in mind with how regards to how much help Topspin could or could not give Twin Twist. In _Stormbringer_ , Topspin demonstrated some medical skills.

I think it is important to note that Blitzwing was a member of the Triorian Guard, the Senate's elite unit of Triple Changers, before the war, and that a lot of Decepticons were probably either security or military caste, before the war, like Blitzwing, based off their alternate modes. They would have been some of the very guys oppressing folks like Megatron under orders from their superiors, and they ended up as Decepticons, anyway. There’s an interesting dissonance there.

Opulus is where the Autobot Orbital Command Hub is.

Kidnapping civilians and locking them up just because one of your commandos can’t keep his mouth shut is not okay, just in case that wasn’t clear.

Impactor is exhibiting something similar to [Argyll Robertson pupils ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyll_Robertson_pupil).

Seven is apparently the average number of sexual partners a man has. Given how long Transformers live, I suspect the number could be a lot higher, but I didn’t want to [generate that many random names ](http://www.saltmanz.com/tf/tfnames.html).

Ob/gyn exams confuse me. There’s this tarp for the patient’s privacy, but most patients already know what their parts look like, so the point of the privacy tarp is ??? So Impactor also gets to be confused.

Twin Twist’s toy has drills in the thighs, but IDW Twin Twist has drills on his back. A physical exam gone wrong explains why. ;)

Piston’s excuse about lubricant interfering with the sampling is actually what I have been told about Pap smears.

“Tantalis” is another name for the city of Sipylus, which probably doesn’t actually have anything to do with syphilis, etymologically speaking, as syphilis derives from “ _sive Morbus Gallicus_ ”. Syphilis has also been known generically as “bad blood”, hence “bad energon”. Incidentally, [Lenin may have had syphilis](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6406447/Vladimir-Lenin-died-from-syphilis-new-research-claims.html) . Syphilis is also associated with the [horrific Tuskegee syphilis experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment) wherein people who could have easily been cured with penicillin were allowed to suffer and die. [Historically](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis#Historical_treatments), mercury has been used to treat syphilis. Mercury is used in making semiconductors, but just dumping a bunch of mercury on a semiconductor probably isn’t a very good idea. High fevers have also been used to treat syphilis, hence the treatment of dipping the sufferer in the smelting pools.

The [_Xantium_](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Xantium_\(G1\)) probably isn’t a Transformer but might be!

[The quotes of Megatron’s poetry are from the Bee Gees song "New York Mining Disaster 1941".](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9G9Nxqm498)

[Twin Twist’s old profile is full of interesting things, such as:](http://ntfa.net/universe/english/index.php?act=view&char=Twin_Twist)

  * He can go up to 200 mph (321 kph).
  * He can transform from vehicle to robot mode in .4 seconds. (He’s a Jumpstarter. That’s their gimmick.)
  * Like a child in a wading pool, he splashes among the shards of useless metal that result from his destructive fury.
  * He carries a semi-automatic cannon-rifle that fires explosive shells, each with the energy equivalent of 100 pounds of TNT.
  * His reckless nature often gets him into trouble and has even led Optimus to consider making him inoperative. _Yikes._



The exact shade of beige-yellow is #e5b75c, and the planet is [Chakar](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Chakar), though that is never stated in-story. The natives are based off tardigrades.

Cybertron’s system is called the [Hadeen System](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Hadeen_System) in Animated. It doesn’t seem to have a proper name so far in IDW aside from “Cybertronian System”.

My ex-firefighter friend assures me that metal fires are awful.

There’s an absinthe reference, and the green fairy’s a helicopter.

I have often wondered how in the heck Impactor ended up an Autobot. My proposed answer here is that he was stuck in Garrus-1 long enough that, by the time he got out, the Decepticons were in full “take over the universe” mode, and he just couldn’t stand it. The Decepticons were in the right, starting out, but they went bad awfully quickly, [killing civilians](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Spotlight:_Orion_Pax) and [mistreating prisoners](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Rise) and [that whole Trypticon thing](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Monstrosity). Granted, the Autobots also did a great deal of horrible things, so...


End file.
